USS Indianapolis: How three men survived the depths of horror

Staci Sturrock

Friday

Nov 21, 2014 at 12:01 AMNov 21, 2014 at 5:43 PM

Adrift in the South Pacific, Vic Buckett was almost defenseless: no food or fresh water, no shelter from the sun above or protection from the sharks below. The 23-year-old’s inflatable "Mae West" life jacket was leaking, too.

A star high-school athlete from Mamaroneck, N.Y., Buckett was one of roughly 900 sailors and Marines cast into the deep when the Japanese torpedoed the USS Indianapolis. At least he could count on the comradeship of quartermaster Marion Schaap, a 24-year-old from Minnesota.

But Schaap was losing a tug-of-war with his own frayed nerves. "Any time the water would hit his lips, he would shake and shiver," Buckett recalls. "He finally said, ‘Vic, I can’t swim. They never gave me a test.’

"On the second or third night, I just lost Marion. And he was a really good buddy of mine."

Under a waning moon, hundreds of miles from land, the ocean was "so dark, dark, dark," says Marine Cpl. Edgar Harrell, author of the newly reprinted "Out of the Depths," his page-turning memoir about the U.S. Navy’s worst disaster at sea.

With rescue uncertain for four blistering days and five bone-chilling nights, the biggest threat to the boys of the Indianapolis was hope diminished, says Harrell.

"You realize that unless the providence of God can bring some help to you, there’s no way you’re going to make it, because you look and see a body next to you that’s been a day or two decomposed, and you can hardly tell it’s a human face."

THE SHIP: A sturdy warrior … until July 30, 1945

Today in Indianapolis, Ind., 13 Indy survivors — out of 36 still alive — will attend a memorial service for the 876 men lost at sea, and they’ll remember the 285 shipmates who’ve passed since their improbable rescue.

And they’ll recall a ship that endured a taxing combat rotation during World War II.

Hopscotching across the Pacific from 1942 to ‘45, the Indianapolis earned 10 battle stars, starting with the Bougainville campaign and continuing through the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

The heavy cruiser’s most notable mission was her most secretive, even to the 1,197 men who called her home. Departing San Francisco on July 16, 1945, the Indianapolis sped toward Tinian carrying bomb components and enriched uranium. The special delivery: integral parts for "Little Boy," the nuclear weapon that annihilated Hiroshima on Aug. 6.

From Tinian, the ship continued to Guam, then began a solo, 1,150-mile journey to Leyte in the Philippines, where her crew was scheduled to train for the planned invasion of Japan.

A few minutes past midnight on July 30, Japan’s Lt. Cmdr. Mochitsura Hashimoto fired six torpedoes at the unescorted ship. Two hit their target, and within 12 minutes, the 610-foot vessel was headed for the ocean floor near the Marianas Trench. An estimated 300 crew members were trapped inside.

Because of a series of miscommunications, the U.S. Navy disregarded the Indianapolis’s frantic SOSes, did not investigate when she failed to arrive in Leyte on July 31, and left hundreds of souls fighting for their lives in an inky black ocean.

THE ATTACK: Two torpedoes, no chance for ship

The night of July 30 was too hot, too humid for 19-year-old Clarence Hershberger to sleep belowdecks, so he nestled beneath the barrel of the ship’s foremost 8-inch gun turret.

He was catapulted into the air when the first torpedo struck the forward starboard side, cleaving off 65 feet of the bow "like a slice of cheese."

"A big wave of seawater came across the bow and got me soaking wet," says Hershberger, who lives in DeLeon Springs in Volusia County. "When I came to and started looking around, I couldn’t see anyone else up there. Whether that wave went across the deck and washed them off, I don’t know."

The second torpedo penetrated a fuel tank, spilling 3,500 gallons of black diesel oil into the ocean, and tilting the ship starboard at an angle of 15 degrees, 16, 17 …

Buckett, of Naples, essentially walked into the water. As he swam away to escape the great ship’s undertow, he was hit with a wave and swallowed a mouthful of diesel. "Everyone was all black, their faces covered with the diesel oil," he says.

The ship went down so quickly that only a dozen of her 35 life rafts were deployed, leaving most of the men in the ocean up to their necks, relying on life vests or floater nets to keep their heads above water.

And because the majority of the crew had been asleep when the torpedoes hit, many were naked, or wearing only underwear, when they abandoned ship.

Buckett had dressed quickly. "I do believe, to this day, those dark blue dungarees protected me," he says. "The light color of people’s skin, I think, attracted the sharks."

THE DESPERATION: Dog-paddling and debris

While Buckett and Hershberger aligned with a group of men that numbered about 300 in the beginning, Harrell’s initial 80-man clique dwindled to 17 by the third day.

But when the 20-year-old Marine saw five sailors pushing a raft made of ammunition cans and orange crates to the Philippines, he joined their futile effort. "We didn’t know it was 500 miles away."

Later that afternoon, Harrell spotted debris in the water. In the Kentucky accent he retains, he tells the story: "There were 6- or 7-foot swells, but with fast dog paddles I made it out there to the old crate. I could see what was in it. Potatoes.

"I grabbed a hold of that first potato and squeezed out that rot, squeezed it out between my fingers. It was solid on the inside. I peel it with my hands and my teeth, and it’s solid potato on the inside. A little bit of water there and a little bit of food.

"I put my arm on that old potato crate, and the boys holler, ‘What is it? What is it?’ They left the raft and joined me. And we had a little picnic, and then we start again toward the Philippines."

By the morning of the fourth day, Harrell’s kapok life vest was so water-logged he had to sit on it to stay afloat — a constant balancing act just to stay upright.

"It’s much easier to die than is to live. You have to work, work, work to live, but you can just give up and depart this earth."

THE SHARKS: ‘Blood-curdling screams’

As the days dragged on, hallucinations sang a siren song. Imaginary islands, dancing girls and the Indianapolis herself beckoned the men, some of whom swore the Japanese had infiltrated their ranks.

Physically, too, the men were breaking down. On the third day, Buckett tried to inflate his life vest: "I went to turn the valve, and all the skin came off my fingers."

And there were those black fins cutting through the water — belonging to makos, blue sharks and oceanic whitetips.

"I only saw one or two," Hershberger says. "But you knew they were there because somebody would let out a blood-curdling scream like you never heard before. And you knew someone had been hit, usually on the outer edge of the group."

Hershberger never thought of giving up, he says. "Of course it was awful discouraging having these planes going over everyday and not getting seen by any of them."

But none of those planes was searching for the men, who were discovered quite by accident.

During a routine flight over the Pacific, Lt. Chuck Gwinn left the cockpit of his PV-1 Ventura bomber to inspect a glitchy antenna sock. Peering out the plane’s open bomb-bay doors, he spotted an oil slick 3,000 feet below. Suspecting a submarine in distress, he hurried back to the cockpit and flew in for a closer look.

When his crew recognized oil-slicked faces among the corpses and empty life jackets, 10-foot sharks weaving among it all, Gwinn broke radio silence: "Ducks on the pond!"

The first plane to respond was piloted by Lt. Adrian Marks, who disobeyed orders to land his amphibious aircraft in the sea. Currents had scattered the survivors across more than 3 miles of ocean, and these initial angels of mercy had to make heartbreaking decisions about who to rescue — bypassing men who were waving and screaming for help.

They decided to focus on individuals and men in very small groups. Harrell was among the first saved: "They drug us into the plane and stacked us in like sacks of feed."

Half a dozen destroyers, escorts and transport ships would deliver 321 exhausted men from the jaws of death, the last of them near dusk on Aug. 3.

Says Hershberger, "I was just a skinny little wet rag when they pulled me out."

THE AFTERMATH: A haunting undimmed by time

Four months later, the Navy court-martialed Indianapolis Capt. Charles B. McVay III, convicting him of "hazarding his ship by failing to zigzag," despite Hashimoto’s testimony that zigzagging wouldn’t have made a difference.

"That was definitely a miscarriage of justice," Harrell says. "They had to have someone to blame, and that was McVay."

In 1968, McVay held a toy sailor given to him by his father in one hand, his service revolver in the other, and took his own life. "He was a gentle person," Buckett says. "So nice, so friendly, and he was good with the crew."

After the war, Buckett married and had a family, built a career, even bought a New Jersey beach house and a boat. A $2 bill folded in his wallet when he walked into the Pacific is now framed and mounted on the wall of his condo’s "military room."

In the 1980s, Harrell took a business trip to Hawaii, where his colleagues encouraged him to join them in the surf. "I couldn’t, I couldn’t," says the Clarksville, Tenn., resident. "I would look out over the water, and everything came back to me."

Hershberger was haunted more than most, perhaps.

"To be frank with you, I became an alcoholic. I drank like a fish," he says. "I went through two marriages, and I don’t know how many jobs. I just couldn’t hack it."

And now? "Let me put it as simple as I can: I will not crawl in a bathtub. I will not wade in any body of seawater. I will take a shower, but I will not get into the water."

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